monday, april 7, 1980
page 8
daily nebraskan
4
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iJLJULOUUU
Nash combines past and present in his concert
By Casey McCabe
Graham Nash strolled quietly onto the Omaha, Music
Hall stage Saturday night without drama or fanfare. A
musician known for his simple style and more often recog
nized as one-third of the supergroup Crosby , Stills and
Nash, his position as a solo artist necessitated that he
stretch out his rapport with the crowd.
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Still, the sight of Nash alone on stage brought loud
cheers and applause from the audience, a sign of loyalty
to the musician, and very likely support for Nash's anti
nuclear cause.
Unlike many artists from the Woodstock nation,
Graham Nash still has a strong involvement with political
activism, and that mood was evident through the evening.
Opening the show was a slow-paced but pleasant set by
a singer-composer and L.A. friend of Nash's, Leah Kunkel.
The ever-casual Nash introduced her and provided some
harmonics on her last number, erasing the typical build-up
of anticipation for the main act to hit the stage.
For his own set, Nash stressed simplicity as he alter
nated between piano, guitar and harmonica, with the only
backup coming from unobtrusive electric keyboards and
Joel Bernstein's acoustic Martin three-quarters guitar. The
first strains of "Military Madness" brought instant recog
nition and cheers from the crowd.
As a sign that times and causes have changed since the
tune first appeared on Songs for Beginners, Nash inserted
the line "nuclear madness" in the final chorus. The
audience was, for the most part, old enough to remember
well the peaceful activism of Crosby, Stills and Nash a de
cade ago, and they welcomed Nash's timely improvisation
with enthusiasm.
While Nash's tour is running with the release of a new
album, Earth and Sky, he dwelled little on the LP and
chose instead to highlight the past with his most familiar
works. The songs receiving the most immediate recogni
tion and applause included "Southbound Train," "Just a
Song Before I Go," "Cathedral" (his best offerings on
Photo by R.K Haha
Graham Nash pauses to accept applause from an appreciative Omaha audience during his Saturday night concert at
the Music Hall.
CSN), "Our House" (the classic statement of hippie
mellowness from Deja Vu "Right Between the Eyes,"
"Chicago," and an excellent version of the CrosbyNash
whale tribute "Wind On the Water."
New songs included "Magical Child" a typically light
Nash piece, this one for his two-year-old son, and
"Barrel of Pain" in which he both attacks and laments the
dumping of radioactive waste into the ocean off San Fran
cisco. At tunes during the show, Nash's voice seemed some
what frail, and his energy seemed to wane periodically as
he stood on the near empty stage. But as he knocked out
his stable of classic tunes, he began to feed off the energy
of the audience to bring his show to a high energy climax.
After retrieving a "No Nukes" frisbee that was hurled
on stage, Nash smUed at the coincidence and launched
into an encore with John Hall's "Power," the thematic
statement from the recent No Nukes concert album, of
which Nash was a major coordinator. He stayed on stage
for "Teach Your Children," undoubtedly one of his finest
works, and found a willing crowd to sing along with the
chorus. Another enthusiastic encore brought Nash back
for a fitting ending with "Simple Man."
The nearly empty third balcony at the Music Hall
showed that Nash's status as a solo artist may remain
somewhat nebulous to the masses. For the dedicated fans
though, he still represents a spirit of musical involvement
that is rare in the industry today.
For all his musical simplicity, Nash keeps a strong mes
sage in much of his work, and he showed he doesn't need
his famous cohorts to get the point across.
Poetry publishers
unadvisaUe-Kuzma
By Trisha Wilkinson
The World of Poetry and the National l'oetry Press are
two companies that give aspiring poets i chance to be
published. However, tor serious, aspirir ; poets, UNL
English Prof. Gregory Kuzma does not ad ise submitting
poetry to companies such as these.
"My impression of them is they're net worthwhile.
Their primary function is money making, ' Kuzma said.
Although Kuzma said he had never heaid of World of
Poetry or the National Poetry Press, he said he knew of
this type of company. The companies may receive up to
$20,000 in entry fees, Kuzma said, and give away $500
$1,000 in prizes. He also said the booklets of winning
povtry are poorly published.
Kuzma stressed that contests like the one the World
of Poetry sponsors have nothing to do with poetry. The
company probably has other money -making interests,
such as health food , Kuzma said .
Continued on Page 9
'California Bloodstock 's 'collage hard to classify
By Scott Kleager
To classify is to arrange, to arrange is to
dissect and put in order that which is not
orderly, California Bloodstock by Terry
McDonell is a new novel extremely hard
to classify. There are so many things
involved in it. After reading, one must ask
three questions.
Is it fantasy? Animal People, spawned
from a trapper and a buffalo, roam in the
valleys of the Sierras, A mystical Walla
Walla Indian rnedine man moves in and out
of the Jtory like Gandalf in Tolkien's lord
of the Rings, passing out peyote buttons
and words of advice. The father of the
Animal People, Buckdown, talks to
Buffalo, who talks back.
It's hard to tell if the author wants us to
believe the Buffalo talked or whether we
are to accept it as part of the genre. If the
latter is the case, then California Blood
stock is definitely fantasy. Finally
McDonell, in a brief bit of catchy narra
tive, writes: Who can truly know if the
buffalo was who he said he was or, for that
matter, if he spoke at all? Buckdown may
have hallucinated the whole thing, , ,"
One also can ask: is the novel a fiction,
alized genealogical-historical account of the
beginnings of California?
Yes, genealogists will find this book
interesting. It reads like Mart Sandoz did
the character research for it and it was
stuck for years in the stacks of the Califor
nia State Archives, Sutter is Jiere, the
original owner of Sutter's Fort, and so is
the founder of San Francisco and the
mayor of Los Angeles in 1830, There are
a host of characters that will ring a bell in a
reader's head for some unknown reason, as
if their names somehow should mean some
thing historically.
The author weaves a tale of the noi-so-famous
and the famous in such a way that
it seems as though the characters really
may have existed at one time, "fliey all
know each other, they all have much to do
with the events leading up to the discovery
of gold in California, This nakes an
impression of reality in the read tfi mind,
Reading California Bloodstock is like find
ing one obituary in a newspaper from the
early 20th century which connects all the
branches of the family tree ,
Is it possible that this novel is really a
western? After all, it does take place in the
wild west," its heroes and crooks are from
that period and everybody either rides
horses or walks. One of the main characters
is direct from the movie "The Wild
Bunch ,"-a person who never blinks an eye
doing nasty things to women, men and
assorted animals, and of course, who gets
it in the end.
What the novel is is a combination of all
three; a fantasy-genealogical-historical,
western that reads like a multiple choice
test, McDonell goes too far with creating
something different and the end-product is
more a collage than a story. He tries to do
too much.
But the novel, though admittedly over
stated, is surprising and should receive
words of praise, So often the 'Best-Seller
list' is boring; this novel is not,
Stylistically, California Bloodstock is
exciting in a creative sense, well -worked.
but off-the-wall too many times.
For instance, T-D.. Jr., a main character
who hopes throughout that Taya (the fe
male protagonist) will fall in love with him
thinks to himself ; "But he didn't want her
to leave. It was a game they had begun to
play, Call it 'go away closer,"
A second example is the page where a
Mexican-Catholic priest calls some rowdy
Americans a new plague of infidels."
Like the setting and the plot, the author
Dlainly overworks his descriptive narrative,
rhe result is he becomes, at times, hard to
mderstand,
Finally, what one has performing a
tontal lobotomy on the book is y$t
another factor in an analysis of a stuffed
book, The title, California Bloodstock,
creates a feeling that California began just
as crazy as it is today.
After reading and inspecting the front
of the book again, one gets the distinct-impression
that it somehow portrays the first
saga of a continuing story, that somehow
the blood of the crazy characters flows jn
the veins of modem -day Califomians.
So California Bloodstock may be a
reflection of, or an explanation of, the
strange and mystical place where everyone
wants to go even today: California.